Extreme contrast edits in Lightroom 4 and ACR 7

With the launch of Lightroom 4, Adobe formally introduced a new version of the raw processing engine that powers both Lightroom and Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) 7 plug-in. Known as Process Version (PV) 2012, it represents quite a radical shake up in the way you can now process your Raw (and non-Raw) images.

The new PV 2012 controls offer the ability to create an HDR-ike tonal range from a single image capture.

Adobe has offered several reasons for this change. With earlier process versions - PV 2003 and PV 2010 - there was a degree of overlap between some of the Basic panel tone controls, not to mention confusion among users as to the most effective slider combinations.

In addition, the default tone settings differed for Raw and non-Raw images. Different amounts of adjustments were therefore required depending on whether you were editing a Raw image or a JPEG for example, making it problematic to share settings between the two file types. So on one level PV 2012 is an attempt to make tonal adjustments more straightforward and intuitive to perform.

Above all though, the range of control when editing raw images was becoming somewhat limited by what the PV 2010 (and earlier) adjustment sliders would allow. The sensor performance of today's mirrorless and DSLR cameras make it possible to effectively extract a more extended dynamic range. The thing is, you need the raw processing tools to keep up with these developments. PV 2012 is Adobe's effort to do just that. In this article, we'll compare some of the raw file editing capabilities of PV 2012 against its predecessor, PV 2010.

What's changed in the PV 2012 Basic panel?

In PV 2012, there are still six primary tonal adjustment sliders in the Basic panel, all intended to be used in their order of appearance. But some sliders have been replaced and those that remain have seen changes in functionality. It's important to note that, unlike previous versions, most of the PV 2012 controls are scene adaptive, meaning their behavior - even at default settings - is optimized on a per image basis.

Here you can see PV 2010's default tonal adjustment settings for raw files.

In PV 2012, the default value for each tonal adjustment slider is 0 for both raw and non-raw files.

The Exposure slider is effectively a combination of PV 2010's Exposure and Brightness sliders. It is used set overall image brightness. The Contrast slider is now scene-dependent, offsetting its operational midpoint slightly depending on whether you are editing a low key or high key image.

Brand new Highlights and Shadows sliders offer separate luminance control for midtone-to-highlight and midtone-to-shadow regions, respectively (although there is a degree of overlap between the two). They work in both positive and negative directions and on an evenly balanced scale. So you can lighten or darken the highlights and shadow areas independently, with a +10 move being similar in strength to a -10 adjustment. The Whites and Blacks sliders are used to adjust the end points for the image's brightest and darkest tones, respectively.

Controlling a high contrast image with PV 2012

In the examples below, we'll take a look at the benefits PV 2012 offers over its predecessor when working on a high contrast raw image that contains a wide dynamic range. Here I'll be using ACR 7, which provides the same PV 2012 adjustments as Lightroom 4.

I shot this image from inside the entrance of a church building. This photo was captured in RAW mode and contains just about enough information in the highlight and shadow areas to show the complete tonal range. The challenge of course is how to process the image to extract this information.

In the image above you can see by the histogram I've overlaid that the highlights are blown out and the shadow details are completely hidden. Because this is a Raw file, however, we can extract some data that would have simply been lost in an 8-bit JPEG.

With a little patience it is possible to recover some highlight and shadow detail using PV 2010. I began by reducing Exposure by nearly 1 stop, to -.95 in an effort to minimize highlight clipping. I set both the Recovery and Fill Light sliders to their maximum values - an extreme move - in order to restore even more detail in the highlights and open up the shadows. The Blacks slider was then increased from its default of +5 to +13 in an effort to regain some of the contrast lost by my extreme Fill Light adjustment. I then lowered Brightness to +40 (from its default of +50) and increased Contrast to +50 (from its default of +25).

While the PV 2010 edits are certainly an improvement over the original image, we are left with a somewhat flat looking image with muddy shadows and relatively little contrast in the background areas of the scene. And you'd be hard pressed, too, to argue that the slider adjustments I've described above are intuitive. Let's take another pass at the same file, but this time using PV 2012.

Using PV 2012 controls I was able to increase Exposure to +45 to brighten the overall image. I also increased Contrast to +36. I used an extreme Highlights adjustment of -100 to eliminate clipping in the clouds and a +100 Shadows adjustment to bring out more detail in the interior shadows. Note that by eliminating highlight and shadow clipping I was then able to actually boost my white point by setting the Whites slider to +10 and lower my black point by moving the Blacks slider to -35. These last steps allowed me retain much more image contrast, which I then increased a bit more throughout the midtone range with a Clarity slider adjustment of +7.

As you can see, the PV 2012 options give me greater control over the tones in the image in a more straightforward, though by by no means dumbed-down manner. In the crops that follow you can see just how much difference there is in using PV 2012 versus PV 2010.

PV 2010 default settings

PV 2012 default settings

Notice how much more shadow detail is visible in PV 2012's default settings. This initial rendering obviously provides a better starting point for extracting useful information.

PV 2010 after editing

PV 2012 after editing

At first glance the edited results may look very similar. But take a closer look at these crops (click on the thumbnails for a larger view) and you'll see that the PV 2010 image shows distinct halos around the column edges as well as false color in the clouds. Overall, the PV 2012 image offers a much more natural, 'less-processed' looking result.

Comments

Nice,.. but maybe just a little too exaggerated. Something in between the before & after, would be to my taste. After al you are looking from inside dark surroundings and out, - just like the eye sees it. Nice shot.

I sincerely appreciate this article and think the writing is excellently done as it is strait forward and instructive and easy to understand. So far so good. However, if you simply look at photo one which is untouched, you will see how much more detailed the whole side walk area is in the middle of the photo. Once you made all your adjustments the entire middle ground seems digitally muted or desaturated or whatever it is that causes it to have lost its original vibrance. I am a photoshop fan but can this picture be fixed up so that it has a truer more acceptable middle ground? this is not what i would call the proper believable "fix" . Thank you. je

After "playing" with ACR7(.1rc) and Photoshop CS6 (trail) on Mac, I have to say these are major updates.

With the new "Highlights" and "Whites" sliders there can be recovered so much more highlight detail from raw files (and with the "Shadows" and "Black" sliders more shadow detail) without color changes, it is just astonishing.

My mistake, it's 11 years old, but my point still stands; it's archaic, and XP64 was a disaster, and with most systems in the last few years coming with 4GB+ RAM, it makes sense to use a 64 bit OS. Besides, Windows 7 runs very well on mid-spec PCs, so for many people there shouldn't be a requirement to buy a new PC. With the low-price for LR4, and in many cases special deals for Windows 7, (here in the UK you can get it for as little as £40 for 7 Pro 64) it's not exactly a huge outlay in this most expensive of hobbies.

There are some of us on a budget. Your cost/benefit might be different. I would rather spend on photo equipment of types that do not go obsolete such as lenses and tripods. Soon I must learn 135 film to take advantage of those wide lenses that my digital Rebels crop so much. I can buy Elan II for $30 (done it 3 times, once with a lens) or a 5D for $700 just for the wide shots. Rite Aid will process film for $2 complete with dust and maybe even a fingerprint. Then scan. By then it's digital, maybe better than my compact cameras which already shoot wide enough for most stuff. XP and Elements will process it fine and I got ACR 6 with Elements 10 that I bought half price under $50.

Thank you for this very interesting review which helped me a lot to understand the difference between those mysterious sliders.

On the other hand, regarding the comparaison between the two results: I am wondering if the difference between them on the details doesn't come just because you added Clarity and Contrast on the 2012 and not on the 2010?

I had already discovered this with an image I took last fall. It was like the sample above in that the main subject was under a ceiling with an arched wall, and the background in bright sunlight. In LR 3, I couldn't salvage the background. It was overexposed no matter what I did. LR 4 managed to retain detail in both shadow and highlights. It's a very impressive piece of software, and make my Panasonic GH2 an even more amazing camera.

Adobe missed something very important with LR4, and that's the blacks slider as it worked in LR3. Once you increase the lighting using the shadows and blacks slider in LR4, you lose any possibility to give a punch to the very darkest pixels of the image in order to create contour.

I disagree. I rarely use the blacks slider. It just crushes the shadow contrast. It's much better to use the tone curve, darks and shadows. I use a linear tone curve. High contrast images are for amateurs.

For the record, and all the misinformation, ufraw, as a precursor to Gimp (like ACR, to Adobe CS*, AKA Photoshop), handles your 16-bit Raw files, and 16-bit light adjustments, relative to photography. ANY concern about not first adjusting in 16-bits, is done there first. This is hardly the whole game, however.

Quote:"When can we see 16-bit per channel support (or better)?

For some industries, especially photography, 24-bit colour depths (8 bits per channel) are a real barrier to entry. Once again, it's GEGL to the rescue. Work on integrating GEGL into GIMP began after 2.4 was released, and will span across several stable releases. This work will be completed in GIMP 3.0, which will have full support for high bit depths. If you need such support now and can't wait, cinepaint and krita support 16 bits per channel now.

It should be noted that for publishing to the web, the current GIMP release is good enough."

Expect cinepaint GIMP is still 8bit, i could not find any version that support 16bit per channel. If you port image from ufraw to GIMP for further editing it will be converted to 8bit per channel. Sadly, still not much point going linux way if you do photography and shot raw's. Just saying...

I'll stick to Scotch rather than Kool-Aid, and until Linux supports adobe products native you can keep GIMP. People who get real paychecks can afford real software, real developers get paychecks for software development, and GIMP continues to lag behind Adobe, except for price. Because it's free doesn't make it better, and being 'free' is your only real justification.

If I use Linux, my applications choices are far more limiting than either Mac or Windows, and given I bought my PC (or Mac) with my own money *I* will chose the applications I run for my best needs. Note this response was sent from a FreeNX client machine running Ubuntu.

I have gone further than this for normal RAW files. I'm no expert, but when using Aperture 3, I found I could by setting the black point to minus 5 , greatly increase shadow detail and reduce noise. Then , when I discovered that LR4 was putting a similar slider in, I was wowed when I found I could just get rid of all the black completely. With D800 files which come in with a flat curve they then look a bit dead, but replace linear with moderate contrast curve and all the 3D modelling comes back with no blocking up of lower tone areas So try using auto first. You will get an arbitrary set of corrections, not very good. But out of this pick black and slide 100 to the right. No more black. Then alter to moderate contrast. Now, with the rest zero everything auto altered, and you'll be surprised at the result. Those adjustments are not needed, mostly, without any black. The plus being that lots of luminance noise vanishes as well, cool...

I use LR4 since about 3 weeks. I do like the develop controls a lot (better than ACR 6.x). I believe it is much easier to bring back details from highlights or shadows. This works particularly well with my NEX-7 which appears to be better in that respect than my Canon 7D.However, i do not like the example above. I believe it is overdone probably to demonstrate capabilities. I would use it much more subtle, especially on the hallway in the foreground.

The orginal emphasizes the courtyard (though uninteresting) and the processed version the interior of the arch which IMO then compete with each other. The processed version leaves us with an uninteresting central portion of the image competing with the interior detail of the arch and the eye doesn't know where to go. Two very different subjects and frankly the end result doesn't work for me but I know it was a shot taken to demonstrate the capability.

My point is it's another tool that when used properly can enhance an image but needs to be used sparingly and with good judgement. As others have said too many are lifting shadows now just because they can.

Assuming one starts with a great photo (technique), and a good JPEG(embedded in the Raw), and right out of the camera, anyone can then edit it for more potential quality, and also then, for styles/treatments/presets. However, not many can actually improve them, overall! Thus, we have Light-room, and still, its not necessarily an improvement, due to subjectivity. You might like your creation. It is art, after-all. However, you may find, that unbiased viewers prefer the (good) original; after all your work. The point is, there's something much deeper, than your choice of editor. You can mess up, difficult to define realism, for one example. Much like the camera, these are just your preferred brushes. That doesn’t say, that they are all the same, however.

If you like limits, and false promises, then envoy your Lightroom. If you want state of the art (freely upgradable, to tomorrows), then you would prefer ufraw, the Gimp, an open file-manager, and all the export options.

@Neodp - Dude, give it a rest. You've stated your preferences and informed everyone ad-nausium about how wonderful you think ufraw, etal is and how Lightroom (it's one word, BTW) stinks. Got it. Enough. No Flame war, just STOP already! I'm sure it's wonderful for you, happy to hear it, this is an article about a Lightroom feature, not a place for you to force feed everyone YOUR preference. Two posts was enough. Oh- and please do everyone here a favor and don't start some Flame war over my requesting you stay on subject, OK? I'm sure ufraw is the Cat's meow. Enjoy it.

The subject is "Extreme contrast edits in Lightroom 4", and this comes by undue, lock-in, version pricing. I'm saying Lightroom is not the only editor that can do this, AND certain naming conventions are being utilized; to get you more locked-in. Yes, I'm suggesting you should give ufraw, and Gimp, a long term, and unbiased try. So what?!

Meanwhile, I'm getting reasonable responses, how to helps, and myths busted, just deleted, while crap like "PuterPro" above posts, is left standing. What's wrong with this picture?

I like Lightroom and I don't need to try anything more at this point. I've looked at other RAW convertors and they don't hold a candle to LR. I really just want to develop my photos and not have to keep learning new programs that are suppose to be the next great thing only to find out that they are just another LR wanta-be. Use want but I'm sticking with LR.

I've used Lightroom extensively. It's promise is to do things for you. In the end, you have to use your eyes. Nothing Lr does, isn't available; by some combination of open programs. The fact that ufraw, and Gimp form a SMOOTH, Raw work-flow combination, is actually very preferable. The choice and process with an open file manager is sweet. My set preference is, click JPEG, and see it in viewer. Right click, and open with Gimp, to edit JPEG. Click Raw file (by cameras particular Raw extension) and this can be automatically brought up in ufraw AS DEVELOPED ALREADY, if needs no other betterment (batching like kinds, folks). I just Right-click a Raw file, and I even have the option of, instantaneously (whole group instantaneously) pulling the embedded JPEG(s), out of the Raw file. Though the file browser shows the icon thumbnail, without extracting the embedded, they are very useful, for web downsizing, as is (I took them as just a Raw. So, I have the option. I always have my originals).

That is not developing Raw, but using the thumbnail, where that is applicable (such as Facebook). Of course, is the Raw file needs help, ufraw is easy, once you know it's sliders (and curves, are advanced). Remember, ufraw does this complete finishing (as if JPEG, out of camera), by camera color profile, as set ONCE. The exception being any lens distortion control (a new option in ufraw development version), and any chromatic aberrations (if any), that have sliders later, in Gimp. Overall, it's BETTER, than the best, from cam JPEG, in seconds. ...and see, if your style is always Velvia-like, you can have ufraw do this, by default! You can even apply a Nikon color pallet, customized for OTHER camera brands, by default!

I looked at the website and it doesn't support my Sony A77. That would not be great to buy a new camera and then have to wait for your software vendor to update it's cameras. Adobe had my camera updates before the camera was even released. It's a bottom feeder!

Reading about your "smooth" workflows with your *free* programs reminds me how lucky I feel that, somewhere end 2008, I purchased a program that can take care of it all: from importing the images from the memory card to my HD and make an automatic backup, to organizing, tagging, rating and comparing view options to make a first selection, do fast non-destructive editting, make a final selection, create a collection, and do a 1 click publishing to my webspace.

Almost 4 years, and 70.000 pictures later, I have a clean database in which I can find any picture within 10 seconds, I have decent backups, I always now which version is which, I don't have any unnecessary double versions.

And whenever I feel a picture needs editing that goes beyond Lr, I can open Ps or any other editor from within Lr , so I always know that copy is going to stay with the original. Never any confusion, not even after years.

(I type this on a Ubuntu laptop; I use Inkscape, Blender, Open Office on a daily basis)

I tried the new controlls in the Beta from a few months ago - can't say I found them more intuitive at all. There are blacks/shadows/highlights/whites sliders in the basic panel (god knows what they do, tone mapping, tone curve, combination of both?) plus there are 4 (almost) identical sliders in the tone curve panel. BTW I even found the hightlights slider to be very non-linear, with a very visible jump in end result below or above a certain point - but maybe this has been sorted out already.

But the bigger problem is that the exposure slider isn't a pure exposure slider anymore. How are you supposed to correct exposure differences in post to achieve the same look between 2 files with PV2012? E.g. if auto exposure has been thrown off by some flashing light between a rapid image sequence?

This is of course strongly balanced by IQ improvements. I'm really looking forward to seeing less halos from the tonemapping algorithm.

Hi Martin! Yes, the Curves panel does have those controls, but in there you can move the little arrows at the bottom of the Curves panel and therefore change the ~operational point~ of those controls, something you can't do on the upper set of controls.I think this also answers what someone said earlier about Aperture being able to change the amount or control point of Highlights and Shadows, saying LR couldn't. Not true, you can on the Curves panel.

Martin, I can't say that ANY part of Lightroom is intuitive! It took me months to slowly learn what all the different parts of ACR that Lightroom has in it when I first bought it. "exposure", "brightness", and "contrast" are not very intuitive from the start.

While I love the new rendering engine (it took a while to get used to), my problem is Lightroom 4's performance. For those using it without any problems, I would love to know what your computer's specs are. I have both LR3.6 and LR4 installed and using catalogs from the same location and have found LR4 completely unusable. Touch a slider, wait 4-5 seconds. Touch again, wait longer...its really awful!

i am relatively new with LR (did just use OSE and ACR before). However, like in ACR i see slider adjustments with a slight delay but certainly not 4-5sec. Have Win7 64bit, I7 3.2GHz, ATI Radeon 5400 (dual), 12GB RAM. I believe that my system between processor, memory, and GPU might make a big difference

I have also Win7 on a Core2 Duo processor, and the difference of speed between LR3 (almost imediate) and LR4 (can take 5 seconds to show next image) is very unpleasant. I do hope LR 4.1 will fix it otherwise I will come back to LR3 !

"Better sensor performance of today's cameras" looks like an exaggerated excuse to generate HDR-like photos from a single raw file. Last crops with columns show that more aggressive editing still leads to more noise in former shadows.

I accept you've decide the Nikon brand editor does better for your Nikon files. Stick with what you will. I'm here to tell all, that closer examination of NX2, and end results, can easily be matched with (my free, and preferred at any price) ufraw (once color profiled) and the Gimp. Once you become truly experienced (like optional curves), you can even match NX treatments in ufraw, and optionally save color profiles (different cams, one time, and Nikon available), and the base curves (one time), and then sat curves, which can be YOUR custom treatments, and match anything you would like, in NX, or any other editor. Is there bit less hand-holding? Yes? Is it significantly better? ufraw BECOMES easier (and instant).

Are you willing to read the ufraw site? Then, you may want to try it. You know, you can do both, and compare. However, will you be biased, or open minded about it, and give it the same time? It takes less, than Lr, overall.

Have you guys been though all the major editors, remade extensive work flows, with each, and given enough time to try various, varying photos, and scenes? Believe it or not, across multi platforms (Win, Mac,Lin), I have. I have access to them all. Do you realize how much time that takes? I offer a very tested opinion. If you just guess, you will never know.

In the end, if you have a bias, you will make that correct. Really, you have to be honest with yourself, and try them. You will simply have to take me at my word, that free, and UN-tiered, ... is not the only reason I use ufraw, and the Gimp. However, the freely available OS platform(s), and open software (not exactly freeware), does save a whole bunch of time with this install, and upgrade aspect.

Martin is a (the?) well respected software master and shows this software off to it's best - but I still can't quite accept HDR (whether from multi images or from just one) as generating anything that looks real! The midtones are awful - just look at the grey building and the halo effect around the edges of the sky/building boundary and it looks like it's been badly feathered and over compensated... to create a look that is plain fake!

HDR is what you make it. I have renderings that are as natural as you would like and when the image looks like it can take an artistic twist they look as surealistic as you would imagine. One thing that I did see is the increase in noise in the PV2012 edited image. HDR is a great blessing for landscape photography and with the appropriate HDR software you can achieve very natural results. In my experience Topaz adjust 5 does a great single shot HDR. HDREfxPro does great natural renderings while Photomatix is a little more agressive, however that's why I love it. 73 Jerry

A billion and a half kids in the streets all have their cameras and I have no interest in defining photography for them or for you. But the only photo taken by a human being that is worth my two pence is one that shows something of the inside of the photographer’s head. A good photographer in my book takes a picture of his/her own mind everytime he/she presses the shutter.

If a photographer takes a picture of anything without a primary need to communicate something, I am not interested.

In this context, a camera is there to photograph what the mind sees, rather than the mind appreciating what your camera and your PC can see together. That is lameness taken to a new level.

Respectable opinion. But then again, a PC is there for the same reason a camera is: to express what the mind sees.Either you like it or you don't. In both choices, there are means in order to accomodate your idea of photography.You want to give shadows "respect and dignity"? Your idea of doing it is by not illuminating them? Go ahead. It's your choice.

the new LR4 features are all fun and games and I'd love to use them, it's just a shame that the programm runs at a crawling pace on a lot of high tier computers. The problems with LR4 and its performance are so predominant in some threads over at the adobe forums that its utterly beyond me that it didnt show up on any of the major photography sites.

I love HDR and algorithms like Retinex, but I agree they often look overdone. Very often, I'll tweak whatever until it shows the features I want and then blend it with the original to restore the "look" of the original while maintaining a hint of the uncovered details. YMMV. :)

@Ivanaker - I hear you, but I think the point was to display the POSSIBILITIES and to show how the new controls work rather than to create a work of art. Some people love the "HDR" look, and some, not so much - they think it looks over-processed, and I get that. The article DOES show the differences between the 2010 & 2012 Processes, and for that, it's a winner. IMHO I don't believe the Author was submitting it to a Juried Art Show as many seem to think from reading the posts. Lighten up People! (pun intended) @ProfHankD - Yeah, that handles a lot of the harshness complained about so much!

There is HDR and HDR.I personally like squeezing out as much dynamic range as possible, but really dislike the punchy "HDR" effect, which has been overly misused much of the time.I have to say LR4 in this aspect is exactly what fits for me, since it is very easy and quick to manage highlights and shadows with good precision, even with my only "contrast edge" exposure with spot metering. ;)

currently I am using aperture which seems to fall behind lightroom more & more. noise handling in LR is already much better. the improvements in dynamic range handling wants to make me switch. It seems like it will save some masking and post processing work.

I disagree with that, since in Aperture, you can have many modifiers, you can fade the masks you paint, the response time is much faster, skin colors are not shifted to red/orange and each slider has much more subdivisions/steps and therefore, more possibilities, specially in color editing, like HUE or when using the WB. Actually, you can get a wider gamut of colors in Aperture than in LR just by moving the WB slider. So the picture looks more realistic, clean and attractive. LR has it power on the UI and mostly in managing the density. You can achieve many types of density/contrast in LR, but's more aimed to create HDR-Like pictures than anything else.

Btw, for landscapes it's better Aperture, also for portraits. But for general photography, LR.

I have been using this to process some high contrast images, it really makes me want a D800 instead of my 5dII :( You really can exploit the maximum dynamic range easier and more naturally than before.

Basically I have found that pulling down the highlights typically looks really good, where as pulling up shadows requires much more finesse to not overdo it. Ends up making me want to underexpose my images slightly, but then this requires pushing the image back up, which the 5dII really handles poorly at low ISO.

I think people complaining just need to understand how much art is required in balancing your images, very easy to go to far, but if you pull it back just a little you'll find things look amazing.

I was double processing my images before to get wide dynamic range shots(two raw processes then masking). But I find now that is unneeded and I can do things in one shot.

I actually try to render all of my images using as much dynamic range as I can; Lightroom does an excellent job in this area, so this is an article I can really relate to, even with my E-PL1, which doesn't have all the dynamic range of a D800 or similar.So yes, I'm also really happy to be able to do this.

Funny to read those negative comments, this article is simply showing what's new, when pushed to extreme. So people can decide, do they need it or not. Go with other software or this one etc. Why is it necessary to push your own opinion on others? Not like everyone likes same processing.

I like those new changes in LR, finally i can achieve those dramatic looks in landscapes without making it look weird. No halos, weird highlight/shadow transition. And what's most important, learning curve is really small and invested time in each photo too. After all i want to take photos, not spend hours on each photo behind pc.

I'm all for new advancement in technology, though I do like the Recovery slider. And looking at the examples here, it seems to me that the older 2010 version is better at retaining highlight information, and in creating a smoother roll-off/transition in the extreme highlight areas, thus creating a smoother negative-film like transition which I love (and in comparison, I hate in typical digital sensors that's not the Fujifilm S5 Pro. The S5 Pro has magnificent highlight retention).

Why is there no facility to control the amount of tonal range affected by the Highlight and Shadow sliders, the way there is in Aperture? Makes these tools look pretty crude by comparison. The ability to target, say, just the bottom 30% of the tonal range with the Shadow slider, or the top 20% with the Highlight slider, and to adjust midtone contrast as well, makes these tools much more useful. Heck, even Photoshop CS3 offers this flexibility in its Shadow/Highlight adjustment tool. Too bad Lightroom and ACR don't provide it for RAW processing.

Lightroom can do this although you can't adjust exactly how the highlight and shadow sliders work. Midtone contrast is called clarity. Since you have these controls also int the graduated filter and in the brush you have a lot of control over the edit.

What do you mean when you say "Lightroom can do this"? What is it that Lightroom can do? Not sure what you're referring to. Is there a way to make the highlights slider affect only the brightest 10% or 20% or 30% of the tonal range the way Photoshop's Shadow/Highlight adjustment does? Am I missing something? I hope so.

Or you could not have a flash with you. Or you could want natural light. Or you could want to take a snapshot in a hurry.I'd rather be able to choose how much "shop" and photo, rather than being tied down to whatever my camera decides it's best. :)

A flash is equally unnatural, then...No flame here, my point being: reality, or the lack thereof, is only what our individual pairs of eyes want to see.I believe tham manipulation pre/during/post is inevitable. I personally like to balance all of them to my likeness and my perception of beauty. That is my own perspective. :)

In the old days (pre-digital) we would do it by adjusting exposure and development. It's called the Zone System. And we had few qualms about burning and dodging (but tried to avoid it with colour because reciprocity failure made it difficult, not because we didn't want to do it). Digital manipulation doesn't make it any less photographic; you're just adjusting the same principles to a new medium.

With this particular picture, you'd probably expose for the interior of the arch to be on Zone III (two stops down from metered) at the film's N+2 speed (set the meter to a sensitivity two stops higher than your tested normal speed for the film) then develop for a two-stop pull. The exact adjustments would depend on how you saw the scene in your mind's eye, but unless you just dropped the film off at the drugstore you'd probably do some adjustment.

I think the original or the first older 2010 adjustment are both better than the new 2012 LR4. The newest has no contrast, hence it's boring. The outside and shadow areas are too equally lighted. Cartooney looking like most HDR. The argument that the eye sees all the stops in real life is true, but not at the same time. The eye's iris adjusts the amount of light and is different as the eye moves from the lighted area to the darker areas. The brain puts it all together differently than a flat 2D print. Shadow areas should be subdued to not distract from the main subject areas. Who cares about seeing too much detail there anyway? This is just another tweak to get in with the HDR crowd and sell upgrades.

On the other hand, dynamic range is not always about hdr, but even retaining some dynamic range of the original perceived image.There's always the option not to use such options and maintain the original dynamic range, so one could maintain his own workflow or style of photography.

Amazing all the slagging for Martin who is an accomplished photographer and author. Who also knows more about photoshop than probably any of the posters here. It's just an example of what the new sliders can do and the topic said "extreme". Lighten up, Nancy Negatives. As for gimp boy, while I haven't used the latest versions, does it now do 16 bit editing, prepress, pantone, spot colour, latest PS plugins like NIK, etc?? I've nothing against gimp, great for those that are willing to go through the even higher learning curve than LR/PS.

Thanks for the very useful summary. The elimination of halos resulting from aggressive use of Fill Light in PV2010 is pretty impressive. Slight nitpick is the suggestion that Clarity increases mid-tone contrast - I understood it to mean local (rather than global) contrast enhancement.

Model Mike,Along a found edge, the Clarity slider behaves in a similar manner to Unsharp Mask with a low amount and high radius setting. This "sharpening" effect is weighted towards tonal areas of the image in between the highlight and shadow regions, similar to using the blend if function on a Photoshop layer. At its extreme values of +/-100 the Clarity slider will extend pretty far into the highlight and shadow ends, but for the ranges of its intended use (at least for photo-realistic results), it can certainly be most usefully thought of as a midtone contrast adjustment tool.

The clarity slider changes have taken a little getting used to for me. It feels like it really grabs a larger chunk of tones than before, and things get bright fast in some areas. Also have notices a slight darkening of skin tones when I try to use it for smoothing.

pp software looks so much more interesting as it has taken on more HDR parameter controls:D

also ironic to see 'RAW' that has been gamma pre-dialed in (processed) much like JPEGs always have been, whereas in the past, all RAW had zero gamma adjustments and always looked oddly 'flat' even for the most contrasty of bright light shots. now we have pp software to 'custom undo' that gamma adjustment (de-contrasting a contrasty rendered RAW).

the software now forced shooters to learn more about the flexibility of their dSLRs, and to not always use the least optimal contrast capture settings for their sensors. too many use 'high' default contrast settings and expect to 'fix' it in pp, when it makes more sense to capture a high contrast scenario using a low contrast capture setting for the sensor. this would mean 'less to fix' because less shadow/highlight clipping would have been captured in the first place.

Thank you, Martin, that was very helpful! I found your book "Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers" to be an excellent book, and it very much changed my raw conversion workflow.

As for many of the comments below, they are on the sad side. Millions of people use and like Adobe, and a Photoshop expert educating people about the latest developments is not an act of provocation, not for reasonable people. For people who prefer GIMP, more power to you, I wish you the best, and it would be nice if you could reciprocate when it comes to my product of choice.

I am not sure we are getting more flexibility here, indeed, I think we are losing some, although I think the behind-the-scenes processing looks to do a better job of reducing artifacts.

We have now lost the recovery slider, the brightness slider, and the fill light slider. But we did not really gain anything to replace them, since we already had four sliders (shadows, blacks, highlights, lights) in the manual section of the curves dialog as well.

The manual section of the curves dialog did NOT do what these controls do at all. Highlights is like a version of recovery that works without hue shifts, exposure and shadows are like fill light without that halos, and we now have white and blacks that control the shapes of the ends of the adaptive controls. In addition, we still have the same curves controls but now have them for separated R,G and B in Lightroom as well, we also have local white balance, local highlights and shadows, and local moire. If that's less control, I don't see how.

Because there's a better, overall way. This would be a worse way, overall. So that’s actually positive, to hear all sides. Are we supposed to list only pros, and no cons? How does that help? If you'd like to retain ANY choice, you shouldn't believe everything you are told, nor expect software to make you a pro, nor expect to get your money's worth, from Adobe. It's not as much about personal preference, as you may have been told. You can take years to learn, or you can listen to others, that have been there. Choose wisely.

Better overall? Your way would soak up about 1,000 hours of my time per year. I don't consider that a bonus just to save $79 (the cost of an LR upgrade) every two years. My time is worth more than $0.04 an hour.

How ignorant is a person who compares discounts, on regular yearly prices (RENT) to absolutely free?

But I wasn't talking about price. I'm saying ufraw, and the Gimp are a better work flow. Especially when combined with an open OS. (Start with Linux Mint).

When will you guys stop, with the decades old myths. You are accepting as facts, something you've never lived with. Everything has it's pros, and cons. I'm saying open software is (overall) the LEAST of evils, by far. In photography, professionally, it's just better.

Look, you need to have you own custom work flows, and Lr does not do that for you. Just like Kindergarten, does not make you an artist. Once your color profiles (for your cameras Raw) are tweaked (one time) in ufraw (read the ufraw site), and you know which of the many treatments, and edits, that (ufraw) Gimp can do, are you favorites (job at hand), it's overall better, than Lightroom!

...and then there's the freedom not to use gimp or free software, and also the freedom to not be taken hostage on moral grounds.It's a question of functionality, workflow and choice, not "good and evil", sorry...(Oh, and btw I currently work as a GNU//Linux sysadmin with excellent knowledge of FOSS, so yes, I think know what I'm talking about).

People make choices based on thousands of reasons. Some use free software, some use paid software.My reasons for using LR are:1. Quick2. All in one3. Streamlined4. Very well presented5. Excellent results6. Extremely competitive for its price

I pay for it. I would be, by definition, free (as in "free choice") to use this software, as you are to use FOSS.If you pretend to "show the road to salvation" to others treating them as infants or by putting politics in the mix, I believe you're getting quite presumptuous.As for the FOSS paradigm, it is a great workflow and may be well suited for many persons - especially to understand internal pc or digital image editing workings. But it IS _VERY_ time consuming; so others just need to launch ONE application and get things done quicker.Moral or political dilemmas are irrelevant, unless in adolescence. Well informed folks know what evil Adobe and Apple are doing, don't you worry. And they know what to choose, so please get over it.

Michele, with all your ranting about religion, salvation, and poo, you really only asserted that you think, an open work-flow is slower, and that's just patently false. Given the known open tools at hand, the work-flow can be far faster, and with better results. Why is that? Simply because open software has far fewer limits.

My whole point posting here, was to say ONCE YOU TAKE THE TIME TO SET YOUR ufraw COLOR PROFILE (once, and which is a simple download, for many), before Gimp (a smooth integration) *and* familiarize yourself with the controls (like any program; including Lr), then you have the best of all worlds, right there, for a free, open download, off the Internet. 24/7 online support, tutorials everywhere, and also free, no hassle, no tier limited future upgrades, as they quickly flow. Once you get you 16-bit Raw; instantly, once ufraw-color-profiled, then the Gimp lacks nothing, except lock-in strategies. It's preferred over Lr. No horse poo!

I happen to perfectly know open source workflow. And to distinguish between good (integrated, less time consuming) and bad (complicated, non linear, more time consuming) workflow.And I also distinguish between a troll and normal poster.And you, dear sir, are a troll.

We're still waiting for a complete description of your workflow in a blogpost or whatever. You're granted the time bonus of the install/tweak part - but the complete workflow must be at least on par with LR in regards of time spent working on batches of photos.